


The Divine Art of Letting Go

by rumble_mumble



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Oops, i really love this fandom i can't believe i haven't made anything for it yet?? why?, if you wanna check my tumblr it's @rumble-mumble!, literally anyone but marvin is merely talked about and mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 23:47:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9792431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rumble_mumble/pseuds/rumble_mumble
Summary: In which Marvin is slowly getting better. Day by day, week by week, life is turning softer. Sweeter. Swell.Whizzer's gone. It has been a lot to take for the family, but they were slowly overcoming it. Mourning in the quiet moments between consciousness and sleep, thinking about the things they'll share with him before the eyelids snapped open and silent tears threatened to fall with the dawning realization. Slowly and surely, they were getting over it, cracking stupid jokes without bitterness left in their voices. Remembering him, but letting go.One day, on a lazy Friday evening, Marvin gets a phonecall he hasn't expected. People he wished to talk to for a long time, to meet face to face with, only to have been speaking with them under the terrible circumstances that tied their lives together.[based on a promt from @falsettosheadcanons on tumblr! go check them out, it's a great blog!!]





	

**Author's Note:**

> this fic basically follows the tight-knit family's life after whizzer's death from marvin's point of view. hope you'll enjoy!! :D

Jason's bar mitzvah was one hell of a night. God bless the Applebaums, they didn't get the chance to see what a massive disaster it turned into. Not that the starting point was all that great.

Perhaps Marvin was exaggerating. Jason sang wonderfully. Cordelia's food was delicious. The champagne was tasty, though he didn't get to drink much of it. He even got miraculously well with Mendel and Trina that night. Who would believe?

They all sort-of… faked it. Slightly. Acting as if Whizzer wasn't wearing a hospital gown, or that the walls weren't colored in sickly pale green, or how the place didn't stink from medication and illness. Treating everything gently, as if not to shatter the illusion that things weren't falling apart.

Sure, it didn't last for long. Soon enough, Whizzer collapsed in Marvin's arms, and the next thing he noticed, Whizzer was taken away from him and into a different room. Marvin cried and he muttered angrily and his heart broke. He held Whizzer's hand for hours but Whizzer wasn’t there, he wasn't there –- he will never be there again, and all that was left was a numb feeling in his head and a loving memory in his heart. 

Marvin couldn't bear it the first days. Maybe weeks? It would've been months, really. He would crack a joke and turn around, but his lover wouldn't be there to shake his head with a silly grin. He'd never play racquetball again. Hell, he stopped going to that gym. Every time a new advertisement came up on a store's glass, promoting a new sort of Polaroid camera, Marvin sped up his pace. He never cooked hors d'oeuvres again. He never even liked it, it was Whizzer's favorite. There were many tiny changes in his life, heaving on his chest so bad he would collapse to his knees three times a day. Jason stopped playing chess, and Mendel wouldn't have someone to laugh with about Marvin and Trina's antics towards Jason. Charlotte nearly quit her job at the hospital and Cordelia wasn't able to smile for weeks. Trina was always there for Marvin, let it be said. She let the Shiva be at her and Mendel's house, as Marvin couldn't bare sitting in his and Whizzer's apartment without Whizzer there, knowing he will never be there again. It's a sure thing to say Whizzer's death was a lot to take.

Nevertheless, they kept going. The sun rose and set only to rise again, and slowly Marvin collected himself again. He had to. He found a new job, a different one, and started making his own food again. Sometimes Cordelia would come over and teach him some new recipes for different kinds of challahs. At times, he'd come pick Jason from school and the two would go to baseball games together. Jason's team was actually getting better, Marvin must agree. Whizzer would've been proud.

Despite what both of them wished for at the beginning of the year, Marvin and Trina didn't cut off their relationship after the bar mitzvah. Their friendship was rebuilding slowly, day by day, with severe caution. Marvin even found himself a new psychiatrist, with some help from Mendel (who actually retired from general psychiatry, and moved to focus on children only). 

Week by week, Marvin was recovering. He dared not to go into another relationship again, though. Every time he went to a different club and laid his eyes on a man, with just an exchange of a couple of words he would've lost his interest in the vile person, and leave immediately.

As time went pass him, he stopped feeling sick with every memory of Whizzer. His heart wouldn't sink with bitterness and sorrow or he wouldn't burst into tears at the sight of Trina's mint green button-up shirt. He got kinder, never raising his voice too loud. His life was turning into brighter colors. Still pale, sometimes grey, but not black. Not mourning. He even asked Trina for the picture she took all those months ago in Jason's bar mitzvah, and put it up in the living room. 

The only thing that still bothered him was how few guests came to the funeral. They were barely ten, including the rabbi. No one knew how to get in touch with Whizzer's family, not even Cordelia, who knew him for the longest. The numbers were sealed in Whizzer's memory, who never even introduced anyone from his new family to his biological. The thought of Whizzer's parents -– maybe even siblings, who knew? Certainly not Marvin -– sitting in their home, back in some Midwestern town, waiting for their son to call on Rosh Hashanah to wish them a happy new year but never receiving any call… it broke his heart. He could only imagine how he would've felt if one night Jason wouldn't come back home.

It was a sunny spring day. About three, maybe four months since Jason's bar mitzvah. In just a couple of hours Marvin would get into the car and drive to the Weisenbachfeld's Friday night dinner, to pick Jason later on that night and go back to his apartment with his brilliant son. There wasn't much for him to do until then, as he finished work early that day, and found himself dozing off with the television open in front him. Sighing, he turned it off and stood up from the coach, stretching his limbs.

In the last few days, Marvin wasn't feeling like his usual self. In the latest weeks he hasn't, in fact, losing a worrying amount of weight, and Charlotte had already given him a checkup and milked a promise out of him to tell her if the situation worsens. They both knew why she should be worried, and he knew he was supposed to be, too, but only one thought crossed his mind -– I could see him again, couldn't I?

He would snap at himself each time he'll come across that mindset, the idea that maybe he was infected from Whizzer all those months ago and it was only now kicking, how different bodies acted different under the same viruses. He'll scold himself, listing all the things he had to do and people to talk to and things to see Jason do and achieve -– and the list was impressive, it really was. He was sure he was going to terribly miss these things when he'll pass away, and yet… 

Scratching the back of his neck, Marvin went around in the apartment. He finished some of his boring paperworks for the upcoming days, and not being able to sit any longer on the stiff chair, he got up again. He tried reading, he tried turning on the radio. Eventually, Marvin settled down in front of the drawer at the bottom of his closet.

The floor was rather cold, but he didn't mind it. The wooden drawer opened with a click, such as always, and it fell slightly crooked to reveal the pale blue shoe-box inside.

It was full of Whizzer's old photographs. The ones he never showed Marvin out of shame mixed with those he was incredibly satisfied with, mostly because Marvin loved them all. If Whizzer would've known he'd probably cringe at that box, throwing out half the photographs one night when Marvin wouldn't be home. Whatever. Marvin felt at ease holding them in his hands. He liked to think he could still smell Whizzer on them.

He held the fragile pictures tenderly, grazing his fingers against the back of the frame. It was Cordelia holding hers and Charlotte's fat ginger cat, grinning like she did the first time she saw it in the streets. Another one was Mendel watching television with Jason, drinking coffee through a gigantic red mug that was so big it seemed to swallow his face. Jason was laughing hysterically at the cartoon figures moving on the screen. A different one was Marvin himself, sleep deprived with his hair a mess. He wore a blue shirt (which Whizzer made sure to brighten up Marvin's squinted eyes in the photograph), and looked glowing with happiness, caught in the middle of a laugh.

Marvin breathed out a laugh as he saw the following one, a picture Jason himself took –- Whizzer passed out on the couch after drinking too much wine with the lesbians. His tie was loose around his neck, and one of his shoes was slumped next to his head on the dark sofa. Whizzer's lips were parted and his long lashes were flushed against his skin. It was blurry at the edges, and the lighting was partly off, but Marvin held it dear to his heart. It was Jason's first photograph, and now the kid was taking pictures on a daily basis with Whizzer's camera. 

The phone rang. Marvin haven't heard it in a long time. He snapped around, jolting from his place by the closet. He felt awfully dizzy –- more than he should, he thought worriedly -– as he stumbled towards the kitchen, the sound echoing through the empty apartment. Immediately his gaze locked upon the telephone hung to the wall, one which wasn't used for a better amount of time, as no one really called Marvin on a daily basis. The only one was Jason, always when it was a complete emergency. (There was a time the kid took a taxi to Marvin's apartment without Mendel or Trina aware to it -– but it was only once, at the very first week after Whizzer's death, when Jason couldn't bare the loss and Marvin found himself holding his crying son in the middle of the night.)

Naturally, at the sound of the ringing phone of his apartment, Marvin felt like puking. His hands firmly took the handset of the phone and picked it up, blood rushing in his ears.  
He couldn't open his mouth and phrase the words: "what happened?" He haven't felt so tense in a very long time, since the collapsing of Whizzer in their racquetball game -– and Marvin didn't think he could handle something happening to anybody else he loved.

On the other end, a man started speaking. A stranger, who Marvin was sure to never have heard his voice before.

"Dear God, Whiz, I thought you weren't gonna pick up at all," he said. His voice was light and playful, and Marvin's face fell from the cracking mask of bravery.

His mouth dried instantly. The man was a relative of Whizzer's, obviously. No random hookups of Whizzer's ever stayed in touch with him, and certainly not after longer than a year. The man sounded like the most relaxed human being Marvin ever encountered with, and he could almost picture him in his mind: a cheerful man with brown hair, with maybe a nose similar to Whizzer's, or perhaps the same eye color. Faceless in the crowd, sitting by a bench in his neighborhood's park with a child that rolled in the nearby grass. 

At the background of Marvin's rushing thoughts, the stranger kept on his talking. "You missed Josie's wedding!" He said in a scolding manner, sounding friendly nevertheless. "You promised to come. What happened, brother?"

Marvin coughed, unable to water his dry throat. Oh my God. Oh my God. His hands trembled as he fought to keep standing, his entire body shaking slightly.

"Whizzer?" Whizzer's brother asked, voice growing worried. Marvin vaguely remembered Whizzer telling him a relative of his was getting engaged, never going into the details when it came to his family. 

Marvin brought his free hand and whipped it down his face. After the longest three seconds of his life, he cleared his throat. "This is Marvin speaking," he said, voice clear and steady despite his nausea. "How did you get this number?"

"My God, I'm terribly sorry," the man apologized politely. He sounded hurried, almost in a rush. Somewhat embarrassed, maybe, he let out short laugh. "My name's Asher. I found this number under my brother's name in the phonebook. Is this not Whizzer Brown's apartment?"

Marvin seemed to forget how to breathe. "It is. Well, it was. Not anymore. He doesn't live here for some months now."

"Oh," Whizzer's brother said, disappointed. "Thank you. Actually, do you know how I could get in touch with him? I haven't seen him much in the last years, there was this big fight…"

"I'm sorry, but he…" Marvin's voice cracked. Jesus Christ, he thought, get it together. Marvin had to close his eyes while he fought to speak as monotone as possible. "He passed away about four months ago."

The other end was quiet, absolutely silent. Marvin barely heard the hollowed breathes from Asher Brown as Asher's heart crushed in his chest, his lungs burning and his knees breaking -– Marvin knew it all too well. 

He stood there, in the all too empty kitchen in the all too empty apartment, his shadow craved on the wall in front of him, forced to listen and silently comfort another mourning man. When will Marvin stop meeting people who lost Whizzer? When will he finally get over this?

"Oh my God, oh my God," Asher rumbled. The tears were audible in his voice, thick and suffocating. "I can't believe we never talked about it, he'll never know how sorry–-"

"Breathe," Marvin instructed gently, so very exhausted. "You must breathe."

Asher took long breathes, falling apart at the other end. After a minute or two, he spoke up. "Thank you for telling me, Mr. Marvin." It has been long since someone called him like that, and a tiny humorless smile crept on Marvin's face. It was Mendel, he remembered. "Did you know him?"

Marvin's face fell. "I-–" he loved him, God, how Marvin loved him–- "Yeah, I knew him." And then, added with a sadder tone of voice he couldn't hold back: "He was my greatest friend."

"I'm glad he left with someone who loved him," Asher said tiredly. "He would've never have it if he stayed at home."

Marvin couldn't reply. Asher kept muttering bitterly about the state of their family, about the fight that caused Whizzer to leave home in the first place. Marvin didn't hear the words, they hung in the air instead, shifting in front of his eyes. They began falling over each other, filling his vision with black spots and an approaching headache. As the man stopped to ease his breathing, Marvin spoke up. "I'm sorry for your loss," He said, filling the silence that fell between them. 

"I'm sorry for your loss too," Asher said sadly. 

The call ended, the phone slipping from Marvin's hand carelessly. Marvin slowly slumped against the wall, and his hands were holding his face –- the tears bursting after long weeks of never crying, after getting better, after learning how to live again –- he was breaking down. 

What was he supposed to do now? 

 

Not long after the call with Mr. Asher Brown, Jason's baseball team had their final match for the season. Jason scored the most important throw, whatever that meant. Marvin didn't fully understand what was going on there, with his extremely limited knowledge about that sport. Only to add on his difficulty, on that very same day his mind was terribly heavy, feeling like it was stuffed with cotton candy. 

As the ball cut through the air Marvin jolted up from his seat and loudly cheered with Mendel, Trina and Cordelia. (Charlotte, sadly, was unable to miss her shift, as many men were sent to the hospital on a daily basis). Marvin yelled from the top of his lungs, the proudest of smiles plastered to his face. As minutes passed the green of the grass smudged with the blue of the sky and white of the clouds. His face was getting hotter, and his limbs were feeling heavier. His adrenaline slowly drained from him, and as realization dawned on him and he tried to make a step towards the medical care set on the field, he collapsed to the ground.

Marvin got sent to the hospital. It hasn't been half a year since the last time the tight-knit family was forced into the same horrible building: walls colored in a sickly pale green, the entire place stinking from medication and illness, everyone treating everything gently. Falling apart all over again.

Jason wasn't sad, he was angry. Trina was tired and Mendel found himself punching a republican in the face. Charlotte was cautious with every antibiotic she gave Marvin, and Cordelia would barely look people in the eyes. Marvin was left almost alone on his deathbed, the only company he received being the constant feeling of his body collapsing bit by bit.

He wasn't angry like Jason. He was frustrated, incredibly, but eventually came to ease. It wasn't like anybody hoped for him to get better –- they knew he wouldn't, and he knew he wouldn't. On his last week, the family finally acknowledged the approaching end. The last thing he saw was Jason, beaming with pride while Marvin grinned at him as they talked about Jason's remarkable success in his Bible class. On his last thoughts he reflected on the last few years of his life: how he had loved, how he had cried and hit and screamed, how he had learned to treat with kindness and gentleness and how to act like a good person. Not to mention, he achieved the greatest wish of many men and women –- to die surrounded by those whom he loved. And as for the one that wasn't there, the one he loved more than everything he ever had… he was going to see him very soon.

For the first time in years, Marvin felt fulfilled. His vision merged to blackness and his heart didn't ache anymore. The only comforting thing about that night was how he could barely hear Trina hushing Jason away from him as he let go.

**Author's Note:**

> my first contribue to this fandom, so I'll be glad to know what's your opnion on it! ;)


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